Jeopardy! set evolution

The set of the American television game show Jeopardy! has evolved through a number of iterations during its (non-continuous) decades-long broadcast history. As the show has matured into a fixture of American popular culture and as display technologies have improved, the show's sets have progressively assumed more sophisticated, more permanent incarnations. The advances in the show's technological sophistication are exemplified by the successive versions of the show's iconic game board, which began as columns of manually-operated pull-cards in the 1960s, was updated to a bank of CRT video monitors in the 1980s that were later upgraded in the 1990s, and was replaced with a nearly-seamless projection video wall in the 2000s. While the show's set initially shared studio space with other productions and required repeated disassembly and reassembly, today the set is housed in its own dedicated sound stage on the Sony Pictures Studios lot.

Art Fleming versions

Jeopardy! (1964-1975)

The original version of the show was hosted by Art Fleming, and debuted on NBC on March 30,1964, taped in Studio 6A at NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The contestants were seated behind table-height desks on the left side of the set, while the game board faced them on the right side. The original Jeopardy! logo, white on pink, was mounted on the wall behind and above the desks, as well as on the wall of the alcove (in a reverse pattern) from which the contestants and Fleming emerged at the beginning of each program. At the beginning of the game, the contestants walked on set from the back and seated themselves at their desks as they were introduced by announcer Don Pardo.

Signaling devices were largely the same as they appear today; pushing them lit up an oval on the front of the desk, which had the contestant's name superimposed in raised capital letters on it. A small bulb at the bottom right side of the contestant's desks indicated whose turn it was between clues. The contestants' score displays were mechanical, not electronic, as was the custom of games produced in New York. They consisted of four lighted panels, each containing 10 black rotary slides with clear printed numerals (0-9); a fifth panel after the fixed (and unlit) dollar sign character contained plus and minus signs, to indicate what direction above or below zero the contestant's score was.

A blue cloth curtain covered the game board and parted in the middle at the beginning of each round to reveal the categories. Clues were printed in white on blue-colored paper cards, and were obscured by blue-colored paper cards with the dollar values printed on them; when a clue was selected, a stagehand behind the board would yank out, by hand, its corresponding dollar value card to reveal the printed clue. Because the paper cards provided very little space for the clues to be written on, longer words in most clues were heavily abbreviated (e.g. "ACC'D'G" for "according"). Once used, the stagehand then removed the clue, which revealed a blank blue card. A Daily Double was indicated by a blue-and-yellow diagonal-stripe-patterned card between the money card and the clue. The categories above the clues were printed in cream color on cards with a somewhat darker shade of blue.

No electronic sound effects were used; a ship's bell was rung to signify a round's conclusion, and when a Daily Double was revealed, a Bermuda carriage bell was rung quickly several times to alert Fleming and the selecting contestant.

The Final Jeopardy! category and clue was revealed from its own smaller board, which in the early years was placed next to the larger game board, but sometime in the 1970s was relocated to between the frame and the curtain in front of the regular game board. For the Final Jeopardy! Round, contestants were provided two white paper or cardboard slates with fold-over covers, one upon which to write their wagers, which the contestants mounted standing up on the right sides of the prodiums just prior to the reveal of the clue, and another upon which to write their Final Jeopardy! responses. In the later years of the NBC version, players used magic markers to write with; in previous years, they may have used grease pencils or even black crayons. After a contestant's response was revealed, host Art Fleming folded back the cover on the contestant's wager slate to reveal his or her wager.

Tom Trimble and Merrill Sindler's original set design used a wood-beam motif with pastel shades of blue and pink; the game board was encased by wooden frame-like paneling. Originally, Fleming stood in front of an aqua-pattern curtain, but in the final months of the show, it was replaced by a blue curtain similar to that covering the game board. Other than that and several other slight changes (made by NBC staff designers Kathleen Ankers and Frank Skinner), the set remained intact for the entirety of the 11-year run on NBC.

From the very beginning, the show was videorecorded and broadcast in color; however, virtually all of the few early episodes that survive are from kinescopes and are therefore in black-and-white. The special charity 2000th episode from February 1972 and several episodes from the show's final year (including the January 3, 1975 finale) have survived in color, however.

In addition to Studio 6A, Studio 8G was also frequently used to record the show.

• 
  Art Fleming introduces a 1974 episode of the show. Fleming hosted every episode of the NBC versions, not missing even one taping. Note the detachable wired microphone, standard television audio equipment during the original version's run.:
• 
  A blue curtain parted in the center to reveal the Jeopardy! Round categories. The word "DOUBLE" appeared superimposed in the top of the logo oval for the second round, and "FINAL" in the end game. The host's podium is at far left.:
• 
  The clues on the original version were revealed by pull-cards, which stagehands removed by hand.:
• 
  Contestants on the original version were seated during play. The lighted oval on the contestant's desk indicated a signal for a response.

Weekly syndicated Jeopardy! (1974-1975)

A weekly syndicated version that aired for about 40 episodes from September 9, 1974 to September 7, 1975 featured Fleming dressed in gaudy checkered tuxedos and a set designed by Tom Trimble and Merrill Sindler. The set was decorated with more lights and a larger logo hung behind the contestant desks.

The All-New Jeopardy! (1978-1979)

The 1978 revival version of the show, The All-New Jeopardy!, was taped from NBC Studio 3 in Burbank, California, with set design by Henry Lickel and Dennis Root. The orientation of game board and contestant desks was reversed to the orientation that remains on today's version. At the opening of the show, contestants were hidden behind wall panels on the right side of the set, which moved away to reveal them when they were introduced. The game board was now on the left side of the set, hidden until the beginning of a round behind a sliding panel door similar to the doors used on The Price Is Right. The set was also adorned with an asterisk-shaped sign which featured "Jeopardy!" flashing in four different angles. The set's red background was ornamented with white "fireworks" hangings, and the scoreboards used eggcrate displays, making it the only version of Jeopardy! to ever use the eggcrate displays.

Screenshots seen below are from the March 2, 1979 Finale.

• 
  The set of The All-New Jeopardy! on March 2, 1979:
• 
  Panels opened to reveal the contestants on The All-New Jeopardy!.:
• 
  The panels closed again once the players took their seats.:
• 
  Panels on the left side of the set opened to reveal the pull-card game board.

Alex Trebek version

Pilot #1 (1983)

The first attempt at a revival of the show with Alex Trebek for syndication yearned to be modernized for the technology age, as reflected in its personal computer set, erected in the TAV Celebrity Theater on Vine Street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, the home of The Merv Griffin Show and the offices of Wheel of Fortune. Two large "PCs" sat facing each other at right angles, with their keyboards coming down steplike toward the floor, the screen on the right framing the three contestant desks — each of which formed its own smaller PC — and the screen of the PC on the left forming the game board. (The host emerged from the left PC's disk drive upon his introduction at the beginning of the show.)

Yet the new set was anything but modern - the original jumbled-letter Jeopardy! logo was retained and the clues were revealed, as in the original Fleming version, by means of hand-pulled cards on the game board. The board values were the same as in The All-New Jeopardy! ($25–$125 in the first round; $50–$250 in Double Jeopardy!). Contestants still wrote down their Final Jeopardy! responses using slates and markers, and their wagers were revealed by Trebek uncovering a wager slate placed atop each contestant's desk.

This pilot also reused The All-New Jeopardy!'s opening theme music and sound effects. The Merv Griffin tune "Nightwalk", which played during the shopping segment on Wheel of Fortune, was used as the commercial cue.

• 
  The first Trebek pilot (taped September 10, 1983) had a personal computer theme.:
• 
  Alex emerges from the "disk drive" of the Pilot #1 set.:
• 
  Each contestant desk was its own smaller PC, but the "monitors" were not actually monitors yet.:
• 
  The game board still used pull-cards.

Pilot #2 (1984)

A new set was constructed early in 1984 for a second pilot, with set design by art director Henry C. Lickel, who had also done work on Double Dare and Family Feud in the 1970s. Unlike the set for Pilot #1, the Jeopardy! set used for Pilot #2 was very modern and somewhat serious-looking, heralding in the "video game" age while looking more like the set that was used when the show made it to air. Bordering the new set were three neon bands—one a deep shade of red, one reddish-orange, and one almost yellow—that on the left and right edges grew thicker in width (on the bottom, only two bands were present). A redesigned Jeopardy! logo was crafted out of 9-foot-high fixtures containing a series of vertical red neon tubes.

The most prominent feature of technology on the set was a brand new game board consisting of thirty 19-inch television monitors that were a drastic departure from the card-pulling game boards of the Fleming era and the first Trebek pilot. Each monitor was separated by a three-inch-thick border coated in red glitterized paint, and the category headings were printed on cardstock similar to that used in the first pilot, and the category headings lit up in unison via backlight from behind.

The contestant podiums were topped with vane displays for keeping score, underneath which were printed cards for the contestants' names. Underneath the cards were shown the contestants' signature versions of their names written with a light pen and displayed on a television monitor central to the podium. Surrounding this center was a neon border that served as a signaling-in light. Contestants' Final Jeopardy! wagers and responses were written using the light pen and revealed on their podium monitors, updating the slate-and-marker system first used during the Fleming era.

Board values were double that from the first Trebek pilot ($50–$250 for the first round, $100–$500 for Double Jeopardy!). The theme music was slightly different than when the show debuted in 1984, but it was now based on the "Think!" music, unlike the first Trebek pilot, which recycled the Fleming-era music.

• 
  Trebek Pilot #2 set:
• 
  Logo and podiums on the Trebek Pilot #2 set:
• 
  Pilot #2 contestant podiums:
• 
  The Pilot #2 game board is set up for the Double Jeopardy! Round.

Season 1 (1984-1985)

Metromedia

Jeopardy! premiered in syndication on September 10, 1984 with only cosmetic changes to its second pilot set. The floor was slightly enlarged, and the red set carpet was replaced with a blue carpet. The same blue carpet coated the podiums, which were slightly redesigned, eliminating the contestants' printed name cards and featured larger television monitors. Alex's podium was also redesigned and slightly enlarged. The deep red, reddish-orange, and yellow neon bands were redone in a red, blue, and a whitish-yellow color, and the category headings received a neon light around a cut insert for each category's printed card. Until 1996, people in the audience could be heard talking before the introduction. A laser swooshing sound was added during the show's introduction and during the Jeopardy! Round and Double Jeopardy! Round. Dollar values once again doubled from Pilot #2, settling into the familiar $100–$500 in the Jeopardy! Round, and $200–$1,000 in Double Jeopardy! About several episodes into the first season, the Jeopardy! logo began flashing on the set.

When the syndicated Jeopardy! premiered in 1984, it was taped at Metromedia Stage 7, KTTV-TV, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. (This studio was torn down in 2003 to make room for a public high school.)

Screenshots seen below are from the 1984 debut episode.

• 
  The set of Jeopardy! in Season 1:
• 
  A view from behind the contestant podiums:
• 
  The Season 1 podiums were coated on the sides with the same blue carpeting that covered the floor.:
• 
  The game board from the first game of Season 1 had a red material coating the monitor borders.

Season 2 (1985-1986)

Hollywood Center Studios

For its second syndicated season of production, Jeopardy! moved from Metromedia to Hollywood Center Studios' Stage 9 (formerly the lot of American Zoetrope) on Las Palmas Avenue between Santa Monica Boulevard and Romaine Street in Hollywood. The set saw minor redesigns by art director Bob Rang, who had previously worked on Dance Fever in 1979. The 9-foot Jeopardy! logo was redone in white neon lighting with opaque white acrylic glass panels covering the lights, the gameboard was repainted to a gray metallic and the carpet changed from blue to gray. The podiums received a slight facelift, and were relocated further towards the edge of the set (an extension of the stage was built to accommodate this) and all traces of the color red were removed. Also, nine light bulbs - which signified how much time the player had to give a respons - were installed in a smoked plexiglass ficture on the top of the scoreboard of the player's podiums. Also new to the set was a contestant entrance arch, which was an extension of the set near the podiums and featured a light blue and yellow neon band setup similar to the main set border. Instead of walking in front of the gameboard and across the set during their introductions, contestants walked through the entrance arch from an area behind the right-hand side set border.

The gameboard monitors also began to cycle through a rapid-pace flash routine during the credits crawl at the end of each episode, with each monitor rapidly alternating between a blank red or blue screen, the Jeopardy! logo, and an image seen from another of the studio's TV cameras. Beginning with this season, and on all sets until early in Season 14, the lighting turned the set background from blue to red for the Double Jeopardy! and Final Jeopardy! Rounds.

Additionally, the large Jeopardy! logo on the set incorporated a rapid-pace flash routine - each letter would turn off individually and light back up one-by-one starting with the "J" and ending with the exclamation mark in the show's title (Which would repeat itself. The flash routine was only used during the show's opening, going into and coming out of commercial breaks, and during the credits crawl at the end of the show. During gameplay the letters remained lit) This flash routine would remain with the set until it was retired in 1991 (by 1989, the flash rate of the logo had slowed considerably).

• 
  The second season set of Jeopardy!:
• 
  The contestant entrance arch, with the first contestant making his way to the podium:
• 
  A contestant rings in on the set. Note the time-out indicator, indicating four seconds left.:
• 
  The enhanced look to the gameboard

Seasons 3-7 (1986-1991)

The set received a minor facelift again. The white acrylic glass covers on the 9-foot Jeopardy! logo were replaced with ones matching the color of the outer almost-yellow neon band, and the spotlights above the set now had color to them.

This set was the third-longest running set Jeopardy! had, as they used it until the end of the 1990-1991 season. Minor changes were made over the years:

• In 1988, the category headings received border covers over the neon tubes that surrounded each heading. (A category's neon would illuminate when Alex announced the category, would turn off when all of the clues in the category had been selected.)
• The spaces between the gameboard monitors were trimmed up a little bit.
• The carpet on the set floor was slightly more refined.
• The riser on the stage was changed from carpet to a blue acrylic glass with a neon backlight (which was almost always never used).
• In 1989, the spotlight hung over the "O" behind Alex's podium was removed.
• Starting in Season 7, the set lighting dimmed for Final Jeopardy!

TV executive Bob Boden received the "J" from the logo sign after this set was retired.

• 
  The Season 3 set background was blue during the Jeopardy! Round...:
• 
  Contestants write their Final Jeopardy! responses using a light pen.:
• 
  The Double Jeopardy! Round game board

Super Jeopardy! (1990)

In 1990, for the 13-week Super Jeopardy! tournament on ABC, the set received an additional fourth contestant podium for the quarterfinals, and the floor changed from gray carpet to a shiny sleek black linoleum tile. Additionally, the gray metallic borders on the game board and the podiums were changed to a texture resembling brushed bronze or marble, and the category headings were printed in blue (instead of red on the regular show). One element of this set was kept for the regular games that fall (for the final season of the 1986-1991 set)—the outline surrounding the scoreboards became rounded off, as opposed to squared off (albeit without the bronze texture). Another element, as mentioned above, was the set in which the lights first dimmed during Final Jeopardy!

• 
  The Super Jeopardy! set:
• 
  The texture on the game board borders also appeared on the podiums and dividers.:
• 
  An extra podium was added for the quarterfinal games.:
• 
  The Double Jeopardy! Round game board

Seasons 8-13 (1991-1996)

In 1991, Jeopardy! introduced a brand-new state-of-the-art set, which incorporated more permanent features. The brand-new set, designed by art director Ed Flesh, consisted of a revised 9-foot Jeopardy! logo, with changes being made to the "R", the "Y", and the "!"; for a short time with this set, the logo alternated colors between red, white, and blue during the Jeopardy!, Double Jeopardy!, and Final Jeopardy! Rounds. The font for all the dollar value spaces on the game board was changed.

In addition, the 2-tone blue and white band making up the border of the set was overhauled and replaced by a solid light blue neon band. The upper band was a 1-piece design while the lower piece consisted of elements from the previous set and elements of the new set. A 6-foot gap separated the edges of the upper and lower bands at the left and right sides, and a shiny metal grid was the main feature behind the contestants, thus the set was nicknamed by some fans the "grid set". The podiums received a new look, incorporating the new shiny grid and a perennial white backlight.

The gameboard was substantially revised. Instead of a 3-inch border surrounding 30 19" TV monitors, the new gameboard consisted of 30 25-inch TV screens encased in a half-inch frame. The result was a markedly more seamless video wall that was inspired by both Disney's short-lived 1990 game show, The Challengers, hosted by Dick Clark, and also TNT's NBA basketball studio show. For a short period of time during Season 8, a large image of Alex Trebek displayed on the gameboard before splitting into 30 smaller images of Alex after he was introduced. The "whoosh" sound effect, used during the Jeopardy! and Double Jeopardy! Round, was eliminated.

Additionally, the posterboard category headings were changed to the use of TV monitors. Also, before the categories for the day were revealed, they were kept secret by a shattered-glass/starburst/geometric-puzzle effect that turned the words on the category screens into gibberish. To reveal the category, the effect was reversed. This way of revealing the categories was kept from 1992 to 1996, although the effect wasn't adapted into play the first few months of the set's use, as the categories just appeared on their screens during that time. By the end of 1991, and until the end of the first season with the set, the categories zoomed in until they reached their optimum size. Also, the categories appeared rather small in the first few weeks of this set's use.

The original vane displays were replaced by incandescent 7-segment displays, which had better visibility when the set darkened during the Final Jeopardy! Round.

Another aspect of the board during the start of the set's tenure was that the clue screens did not show the Jeopardy! logo or images of Alex individually before play started, but rather had the logo spread out across the video wall which broke up as the dollar amounts filled the individual screens. After a couple of shows, the entire logo on the board was revised to individual globe logos, using the globe logo in the show's intro. The Jeopardy! logo on the set was changed to a cycle between flashing red-to-white and flashing blue-to-white during the Jeopardy!, Double Jeopardy!, and Final Jeopardy! Round respectively.

The "entrance arch" was replaced by a wall of the "metal grid" material and contestants from then on until 2000 walked onto the set. The floor adopted the shiny black look from Super Jeopardy!, also, the video monitors that displayed the players' names changed to red during the Double Jeopardy! round, to match the color of the backdrop (The monitors stayed blue throughout the show for the first [8th] and last [13th] seasons on this set). Coming out of the 1st commercial break from Season 9 through the first four weeks of Season 13, Alex talked to the three contestants starting from the third player through the first player (returning champion) right after concluding the Jeopardy! Round.

A few months after the new set's introduction in 1991 came a revised version of the original theme from 1984. In the 1991-1992 season, the original 1984-1991 theme was still used, but played at a lower pitch. The revised "bongo" version was first used during tournament/specials weeks that season before being put permanently into use from the start of the 1992-1993 season onward. Another difference during the 1991-1992 season was that the blue background was richer and darker during the Jeopardy! Round. From 1992-1996, the blue background was slightly lighter and had a slight aqua tint to it.

Sony Pictures Studios

After the final shows of Season 10 were taped on February 15, 1994, the set was disassembled and reconstructed at Sony Pictures Studios' Stage 10 on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, California, where the first shows of Season 11 were taped on July 12, 1994. The deeper soundstage permitted for the audience risers to be placed further away from the main set area.

This set lasted through the shows taped September 4, 1996 (mid-Season 13), and was tied with the 1986-1991 set as the second longest-tenured set on the Trebek version.

• 
  The Season 8 set background was blue during the Jeopardy! Round...:
• 
  ...and turned red during the Double Jeopardy! Round.:
• 
  The set lighting darkens for Final Jeopardy!:
• 
  Alex Trebek watches the dollar values pop in on the game board.

Seasons 13-19 (1996-2002)

On the episode aired November 11, 1996, two months after the start of Season 13, Jeopardy! introduced an entirely new set by production designer Naomi Slodki, also constructed on Stage 10 on the Sony lot. Its purple-backlit gridded walls and wood accents earned it the nickname the "sushi bar" set amongst fans.

A notable new feature was a 9-foot Jeopardy! logo etched in glass, with the P and A being automatic sliding doors through which Alex walked during his introduction at the beginning of each show (similar to the big doors on The Price Is Right). The backdrop behind the contestants, and for the entire set, consisted of dark gray granite columns and huge wood panels with small etched glass windows.

A glass grid was placed behind the glass "Jeopardy!" logo, both of which were backlit. In the first season of this set, the glass doors were backlit in red and the grid behind it in blue for the Jeopardy! Round. For the Double Jeopardy! Round, the glass doors' color was changed to blue and the grid to pink. In the second season of the set, the Double Jeopardy! Round changed them both to purple, and, for the third season, the glass and grid remained the same throughout the entire episode: red glass with a blue grid. For the rest of the entire time of this set, the glass was always backlit in white and the grid in purple.

The set floor consisted of a glossy black circle rimmed by tan wood and granite-textured tile, surrounded by a floor that reflected the dark blue of the studio lighting.

The contestant podiums were overhauled to a more wood-like appearance and Alex's podium received a similar treatment. Alex's podium had a light blue neon backlight and a bluish marble globe in front of it.

Additionally at the start of Season 14, two large television displays were added to the left and right hand sides of the set (usually seen off-screen), and a wood-toned backdrop in the style of the set was built behind the audience, which was occasionally seen on-camera.

Also in Season 14, Jeopardy! rolled out a brand new rendition of the theme music now features a jazzy-music and a retooling of the Final Jeopardy! "Think!" music. For the first two weeks of Season 14, the "Think!" music had only a piano lead, but beginning with the September 15, 1997 episode, the "Think!" music was remixed to include a trumpet lead in the second verse. In addition, the microphones on the podiums were removed; the contestants and Alex had clip-on lavalier microphones.

The red background, used for the Double and Final Jeopardy! Rounds since the second season of the show, was eliminated after the October 3, 1997 episode. (Prior to that date; when the show finished, the background changed back to blue on this set).

The swooshing sound effect played at the top of the show was removed after the November 8, 1996 episode. A wind blowing sound effect was used in the theme from the start of Season 14 until the end of Season 16. At the start of Season 17, the swooshing sound effect returned in the introduction, and remained there until the end of Season 24. The theme music now featured the orchestra music from April 23, 2001 and remained there until the end of Season 24. The orchestra theme music was used from taping in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In the middle of Season 14, the practice of popping in the dollar figures on the Double Jeopardy! Round board had ended; the dollar figures were already present on the screens coming out of the second commercial break. Also, halfway through Season 16, the audience no longer applauded coming out of the second commercial break.

In the first season with this set, the category monitors were blank, and came in with split in half in horizontal lines, and then came together, forming the category name. Beginning in Season 14, and continuing into the current set, the category names were covered by a Jeopardy! logo (or Double Jeopardy! in the second round, or the respective tournament logo in tournaments). From 1997-2000, the category effect screen rotated the page up like the tumbler on a slot machine, and from 2001 onward, the category effect screen faded in.

Beginning in Season 17 (2000–2001), the contestants no longer entered the studio during their introductions by Johnny Gilbert. They simply stood already positioned behind their podiums for their introductions. Coming out of the 1st commercial break until May 2002, there were prizes for the 2nd and 3rd place contestants introduced by announcer Johnny Gilbert before Alex talked to all three contestants starting from the third player through the first player (returning champion). It was previously used after the Double Jeopardy! Round before giving the Final Jeopardy! category. This was the longest-used set on the Trebek version.

On the episode aired September 21, 2001 during the 18th season, Alex shaved off his trademark mustache. Beginning on November 26 2001, the clue values were increased to $200–$1,000 in the Jeopardy! Round and $400–$2,000 on the Double Jeopardy! Round.

Set auction on eBay

After the set was dismantled, portions of it were placed on eBay by Sony Pictures between December 8, 2002 and December 15, 2002, with auction proceeds donated to charities World Vision and the Motion Picture & Television Fund. The items that were placed up for bid were ten, 19-inch by 19 3/4-inch by 1/2-inch plywood with Pergo laminate panels, twenty, 15-inch by 15-inch frosted glass tiles (the tiles behind the contestants), all three contestant podiums, and the entire 9-foot-high Jeopardy! logo. All auction items were autographed by Alex Trebek. The logo sold for approximately $100,000, at the time one of the most expensive sales on eBay, and one of the podiums sold for nearly $10,000. Some past contestants participated in the auction. Bob Fleenor used some of his Jeopardy! winnings to buy one of the panels in a Dutch auction that ended at $545.01. College Champion Pam Mueller bought the rightmost podium. Million Dollar Masters winner Brad Rutter was outbid for the leftmost (champion's) podium.

• 
  The set of Jeopardy! in Season 18:
• 
  A view from behind the contestant podiums:
• 
  The Season 18 podiums:
• 
  The Season 18 game board in the Double Jeopardy! Round

Seasons 19-25 (2002-2009)

On November 25, 2002, three months after the start of Season 19, Jeopardy! introduced another all-new set by Naomi Slodki, having completely torn down the "sushi bar" set in order to build it. The set featured hanging panels with stone textures and metallic finishes in gold, silver, and bronze, as well as translucent light blue (perhaps sanded glass). Some of these panels were switched out for special tournament and non-tournament play to feature the logos of the special games being played. New, trapezoid-shaped podiums displayed contestant scores on new flat-panel video monitors (allowing, for the first time, a contestant with a negative score to have his or her score display shown with a red background). Several virtual tours featured on the official Jeopardy! web site are based on the 2003 set. The scoreboards were changed from incandescent 7-segment displays to blue and red video displays with dynamic scorings, meaning that positive scores were displayed in blue and negative scores were displayed in red. There was some neon surrounding some of the square panels in the set's first year of use. Also there was a neon light on the bottom of the set which was removed at the end of the 19th season, and then used again for a short time during season 21.

Viewers may or may not have noticed that during Final Jeopardy!, when the lights are dimmed, the back light screen behind the set is turned red, a somewhat revived practice from the 80s and 90s when the Double Jeopardy! round was in play.

Slodki also designed the numerous traveling sets used for College Championships, Power Players Weeks, etc., all of which were fabricated in Southern California and shipped to their road venues for tapings.

• 
  The set of Jeopardy! in Season 22:
• 
  A view from behind the contestant podiums:
• 
  The Season 22 podiums had a trapezoidal shape to them.:
• 
  The game board from the last game of Season 22 used the seamed bank of monitors for the last time.

Jeopardy! and its sister show Wheel of Fortune became the first game shows to air in high-definition when both shows debuted their new seasons on September 11,2006. While the show did not receive a completely new set as it had in 2002, the following changes to the set accompanied the move to HD:

• The Jeopardy! game board, which had appeared as a wall of individual video monitors since 1984 and had not been updated since 1991, was replaced with a nearly seamless projection video wall. (A seamless board had been a part of the show's traveling set since November 1997; a similar [or perhaps the same] one was used for Rock & Roll Jeopardy!)
• The blue background of the category and clue screens was given a random gradient texture to accommodate the screen resolution of high definition.
• The contestant podiums and host's podium were revised. The contestant podiums were spaced wider apart so that a camera shot could be trained on a single contestant within a 16:9 aspect ratio frame, without showing the other contestants on the sides of the screen. The signaling device buttons were now dark turquoise rather than white.
• The paneling on the sides of the game board was made symmetrical; previously, the paneling had existed only on the board's right side.
• The control room and post-production facility were upgraded for HD compliance.

Between Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, the various HD improvements represented an investment of about $4 million, 5,000 labor hours, and 6 miles of cable. Both shows had been shot using HD cameras for several years prior to the production, post-production, and distribution upgrade. On standard-definition television broadcasts, the shows continue to be displayed full-screen (i.e., not letterboxed).

One common complaint among viewers about the new set was that the LED-based red podium signal lights were difficult to see, particularly on standard-definition screens, making it hard to identify which contestant had rung in on a clue. The producers of Jeopardy! apparently arrived at the same conclusion, because on September 25, 2006, two weeks after the new set's introduction, the red podium signal lights were replaced with white ones. Viewer feedback could not have contributed to this change, since the September 25 show was taped in advance of the September 11 set debut; the swap was made after the first two-day taping session.

The beginning of Season 25 saw the following changes:

• The vane display off-camera scoreboard used by the contestants was replaced with a video board. Score changes were no longer accompanied by audible "clack"s.
• The main theme and "Think!" music were revised.
• The swooshing sound effect at the top of the show was eliminated.
• The practice of popping in the dollar figures on the Jeopardy! Round board and its accompanying sound effect were retired. The dollar figures were now already present on the screens following the contestant and host introductions. However, the practice of popping in the dollar values at the beginning of the Jeopardy! round returned at the beginning of the 26th Season with a different sound effect.

This was the longest-running set during the Trebek era.

Season 26 (2009-present)

In March 2009, Jeopardy! introduced another all-new set at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. This time, the game board featured 36 LCD HD monitors. An LCD monitor was also added next to the host's lectern to reveal the Final Jeopardy! category before the commercial break between the Double Jeopardy! and Final Jeopardy! rounds. The players' scores are always shown in blue backgrounds (positive scores are shown in white text on a blue background while negative scores are now shown in red text on a blue background). Beginning with the March 15, 2010 episode, the consolation prizes appeared in the lectern score displays at the end of the game. This set debuted with the Celebrity Jeopardy! and Tournament of Champions episodes taped in 2009 at the CES in Las Vegas, although the previous set was still in use for the rest of Season 25 when the remaining episodes returned to Los Angeles. At the beginning of Season 26, however, this new set became the primary set for all Jeopardy! episodes.

Also at the beginning of Season 26, the practice of popping in the dollar values at the beginning of the Jeopardy! round returned but with a different sound effect.

• 
  The Season 23 "HD-friendly" Jeopardy! set:
• 
  A view from behind the contestant podiums:
• 
  The red signal lights on the new podiums were replaced with white ones (shown) after the first two weeks.:
• 
  The Season 23 game board featured an almost-seamless bank of monitors.

External links

• Official Jeopardy! Web site (The Virtual Tour and desktop wallpapers are based on the Season 19-22 Jeopardy set)
• Official Jeopardy! message board
• Jeopardy! at IMDb
• Tribune Studios floor plans, including a studio lot map (Tribune Studios is the former name of the now Sunset Bronson Studios on the KTLA lot)
• Hollywood Center Studios lot map
• Sony Pictures Studios lot map (PDF)